BlockShoals lawyer: Binance trading falls under SEC
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- Marie Antonette Quiogue, BlockShoals' head of legal, acknowledged that neither Binance nor BlockShoals had applied for a local VASP license, but argued the absence does not bar them from SEC-regulated services
- Quiogue drew a jurisdictional line: "Trading, the activity of trading, is clearly under the jurisdiction of the SEC," while noting that handling pesos falls under the BSP
- Quiogue conceded that if BlockShoals and Binance introduce products regulated by other agencies, they must obtain authorization from those agencies first
- The Philippines SEC first flagged Binance in November 2023, warning the public that the platform was not authorized to sell or offer securities in the country
- The SEC escalated in March 2024 by asking the National Telecommunications Commission to block access to Binance's website, and local ISPs began restricting access as a result
- Binance's platform remained accessible to users in the Philippines at the time of publication, despite the 2024 NTC block order
Why it matters: The argument puts a finer point on the Philippines' crypto enforcement gap: regulators can block a website and warn the public, but if trading genuinely falls outside the BSP's VASP regime, Binance can keep serving Filipino users without ever securing the license authorities want them to hold — and the SEC's 2024 block order has not stopped access in practice.
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